Carolyn G. Hart_Henrie O_05 (9 page)

Rick held up his hands, as if to stop the angry flow of words. “I had it all wrong. She didn't go with a guy. It was a friend who was sick. It wasn't anything like we thought. Maria Elena will understand.” And he turned away to stride toward the back of the store.

Susana's angry glance followed him. “He's just a fool for a pretty face. How can Iris be going off with a man one minute and the next thing we hear it's a girlfriend. I don't believe a word of it.” She threw up her hands, bracelets jangled. Abruptly, she lifted her shoulders in a shrug. “I can't take care of everything around here. And I can't waste any more time worrying about that silly girl. You can tell her grandmother that she's more trouble than she's worth. Now,” she tossed her head and the high black pouf wavered like a bird's crest, “you're welcome to come along with me, but I have to work. What would you like to do?”

What I wanted to do was chase after Rick and insist he tell his grandmother—and me—the truth. But I knew that would not happen. He'd made it abundantly clear that Maria Elena wasn't to know the circumstances around Iris's disappearance. I could gain access to Maria Elena, tell her what I knew, which seemed at this point to be very little, and what would that accomplish? Rick could deny all of it and I had no proof. I'd planned to see Maria Elena next to tell her Iris was safe. Rick had beat me to it. And he'd left without my making it clear to him that he was in danger. I'd find him as soon as he finished talking to Maria Elena.

For now, I smiled encouragingly at Susana. “Oh, I'd love to follow you about and learn more about the family and the store. I know Iris is exasperating, but since”—I bent nearer, dropped my voice conspirato
rially—“she may soon truly be a part of the family, and I know you'll keep that confidential”—let Rick work himself out of this one if his intentions weren't honorable—“I promised Iris's grandmother I'd find out everything about all of you.” I cocked my head to one side and peered at Susana inquisitively. She could chalk me up as one of those old women who love to ask personal questions, the more intrusive, the better. “Maria Elena told me she's sure I'll enjoy getting to know all of you. Now you and Tony are the real backbone of the store, aren't you?”

Susana's sour look softened. “Maria Elena knows who does the work. She depends on me. Oh, there's lip service to the men, of course. But she knows that Celestina and I keep things going. Tony always has grand plans that come to nothing and Frank's too busy pleasing Isabel. When it comes down to work, you'll find Celestina and me taking care of everything.” Her brows drew into a tight frown. “As for Rick,” she spoke grudgingly, “I'll admit he tries hard. But he thinks he knows all about everything. Half the time he doesn't even check with me. I have to be sure everything runs right. No one really understands how hard I work. And now I'm so behind since Iris has run off. There are three shipments to be unpacked—”

“Could I help?” I wouldn't mind another chance to nose around the shipping room.

Susana shook her head quickly. “That's nice of you, but we can't have anyone except employees working in receiving. Liability, you know. But if you'd like to watch while I unpack—” She bustled to the front desk and I followed. She pushed the buzzer beneath the counter. “Tony, can you take over out here for a while? I need to get to those shipments from Guadalajara.”

In a moment, Tony joined us. He seemed to have forgotten his irritation with me earlier, when I was talking to Manuel. He greeted me with an ebullient smile. “Enjoying yourself, Mrs. Collins?” He focused his charm on me without even a glance at his wife, who watched him sourly. I had a city editor once who had a motto framed on his desk: “Attitude Is Everything.” As Susana and I walked away, I glanced at her, at her cold eyes, tightly pressed lips. Okay, maybe Tony deserved to be ignored, but she had all the charm of a porcupine despite her haggard beauty.

In the workroom, I perched on a high stool near the first table. Away from Tony, Susana relaxed and worked quickly and efficiently, occasionally holding up pieces for me to admire. “These plates have Aztec motifs.” I recognized the magnificent green plumes of the quetzal, the crested bird famous for its glorious feathers. “They were made in the nineteen thirties. Aren't they lovely?”

“Everything you have here”—I spread my hand around the room—“is lovely. Have you always been interested in pottery? Or did that interest come after your marriage?”

She traced a finger around the patterned rim of the plate. “I knew when I married Tony that I would be a part of Tesoros. But it's odd when I think about it. The store means more to me than it does to him. He only stays because of Maria Elena.” She stepped to the stand and wrote swiftly in the ledger. When she turned back to the table, the pen clattered to the floor.

“What would he like to do?” I slipped off the stool, picked up the pen and placed it by the ledger. I stood close enough to see the fine blue veins in her hands, the rich purplish red of her fingernail polish, the deep lines on her face.

She lifted out another plate, the blue background richer than a Cozumel sky. “Tony? Who knows?”

I looked at her curiously. Surely a wife should know better than anyone the desires of her husband's heart.

She added the new plate to the list, placed it in the stack to be shelved. “His place is here.” She spoke with finality.

“How did you meet?” My tone was chatty. Is there a woman in the world who doesn't enjoy remembering how she and her husband met?

Susana was so long in answering, I thought she was going to ignore the question. But, as she poured popcorn packing material into a barrel, she said indifferently, “At Central Catholic. He was a senior and I was a sophomore at Providence. I thought he was the handsomest boy in the world.” Her tone was curiously remote, as if she looked back across a chasm of time. “His cousin Lucia introduced us at a rally before a football game. He was the only boy I ever dated.”

“Love at first sight,” I said lightly.

She crushed a cardboard packing box flat, tossed it on a pile near the door. “Kids,” she said disdainfully. “They don't know a thing.”

“I suppose it was exciting to marry into the Garza family. Maria Elena seems to be a marvelous person.”

Susana carried another box to the table, opened it, carefully unwrapped protective plastic from a wax figure of a bent Indian woman with a load of pottery on her back. She worked fast now, unwrapping, cataloging, checking current prices, tagging and shelving the figures. As she worked, she talked. “Everyone thinks Maria Elena is so perfect. Of course, she was a wonderful businesswoman, but she expected her sons to be able to take over. And the truth of the matter is that they can't. Even she knew better than to let Frank run
the store. Frank has no confidence. Maybe that's why he married someone like Isabel. She may look like an empty-headed figurine, but to her the finest sport is figuring out the chink in someone's armor and shoving in a stiletto. She likes to know everything and she's willing to use everything she knows. And expensive? Frank could have a dozen mistresses for what Isabel costs him…”

There was no hint of that moment in the auction room when Isabel taunted Tony about his little friends.

“…and Frank's always in debt. She spends the money faster than he makes it. He's always trying to figure out some scheme to make more. That's one thing about Tony, he is very careful about money. We never buy a new car unless we have money in the bank. But Frank has plenty of places to spend money. He dotes on their kids. Their daughter, Gabriela, is in France for her junior year in college, and every time Isabel talks about her, Gabby's been to London or Spain or somewhere extra. And they have two girls in school in California. Frank has to be careful that Isabel doesn't get jealous of the kids, so whenever he does something special for one of them, he buys more jewelry for Isabel. All she thinks about are things—more jewels, more antiques for her house, more clothes. She doesn't ever look past things she can hold and wear and see. And now Maria Elena is so crazy about Rick and Iris, but she'd better remember who makes things work.” She lined up a row of wax figures in blue uniforms, each playing a different musical instrument. She tapped the head of the trumpet player and the golden tassel on his cap fluttered. “The heads are spring-mounted,” she murmured and for an instant a smile lighted her face and she looked years younger. And happy. “See how perfect the detail is—the buttons
on the jacket, the red stripe down the pant legs, even the little brown boots.”

I gently touched a head and watched it wobble. “When were these made?”

She studied the figures. “Around eighteen ninety, nineteen hundred. This is very special because it's the complete set. It's quite hard to find a complete set.”

I looked around the huge room, brightly revealed by the overhead lights. “There's certainly a great deal of value here. I see now why Celestina was upset when Iris left the door unlocked last Thursday.”

Susana finished her entry into the ledger, then looked up with flashing eyes. “Celestina ran around looking for Iris. When we found the door open, I was scared to death something had been taken. I don't mind telling you I came back and looked the place over very carefully.” She frowned and her dark brows drew down. “It was very odd. Iris had finished unloading and cataloging a box of wax figures”—she pointed across the room—“do you see the matadors? She'd started on a shipment of lacquerware. She was only half done when she went off and left it! But I looked around the entire room. Nothing seemed to be disturbed except that wardrobe over there. We just received it a few weeks ago. One of the doors was ajar.”

I crossed to the lovely piece, more than six feet tall, the rich red wood panels hand carved.

Susana was at my elbow. “Carved pine and mesquite. It's very old, perhaps late seventeenth century. Isn't that huge iron bolt magnificent?” The bolt was perhaps eight to ten inches long. At the moment, it was secure in its loop.

I reached out. “May I?” As she nodded, I touched the cold metal, drew it back. The door creaked as I opened it and there was a musty smell of old wood,
dark recesses, and age. I poked my head inside. There was light enough to see that the wardrobe was empty. I would have liked to shine a bright light into the interior, see if there was any scrap of material, any suggestion of what the space might have held.

Susana peered past my shoulder. “…nothing in there, of course. But I know I would have noticed if it had been open that morning.” She put both hands on her narrow hips. “Iris must have opened the door. But I can't imagine why she would…”

“Curiosity,” I murmured, stepped back. And more than that, perhaps a variation on the old axiom of whenever you count on surreptitiousness, someone is sure to be looking. I'm not especially given to positing cosmic connections. But if nothing had been hidden in that ancient wardrobe, Iris would never have looked. Or, put another way, Iris looked because something was hidden. I was reminded of an old friend's story. When he was a young lieutenant in Vietnam, he was on leave in Tokyo. One night a fellow lieutenant said they could pick up girls, have a great night. The young officer thought of his wife in Sacramento, told his friend that no, he wasn't going to do that. The other officer kept insisting, saying that his wife would never know. As they came around a corner, the young man heard a call. Coming toward him, smiling and waving, was the priest who had performed their marriage.

Susana reached out, closed the old, old door. “…she should have been attending to business. And then to go away and leave the main door open. Maria Elena needs to know about that.” She slid a sideways look at me.

“I suppose it's important to keep Maria Elena informed of anything out of the ordinary.” I was still
looking at the wardrobe. “This is such a fine piece. Do you know where it came from?”

“We bought it at an estate sale here in town last week. It cost two thousand. But we can probably get almost four for it.”

“I suppose it was packed with old things.”

Her head shake was swift. “Oh, no. It was empty. At that kind of sale, everything of value is offered separately.”

“So it arrived empty?”

“Yes. I cleaned it out myself. I think it must have been empty for years.” Her nose wrinkled. “Cobwebs and what looked like a dried up mouse. I wore gloves to clean it out and then I used a hand vacuum.”

“Why isn't it out on the main floor?”

She slid home the bolt. “We have several large pieces there already. We'll wait until one of those sells.”

So the wardrobe arrived, was logged in, cleaned, and should have sat undisturbed until a place was available in the showroom. No one should have had occasion to look into it, so it must have seemed a fine place to stash—what? Drugs? Money? Something of value.

“You'll probably have plenty of room after the auction Thursday.” The auction, something of value, people arriving, a nebulous thought began to grow. “Do you have a great deal more to do to get ready?”

“Much of it has to be done at the last minute. Frank and Isabel want me to move everything upstairs now, but I refuse. We simply can't have that many valuable objects in that room for more than one night. It's too great a security risk. We have to put the pieces in place Wednesday because we have a preview in the afternoon for the auction guests. It's really very exciting.
They all try to act as if they're just strolling about, but there's a huge undercurrent of excitement. They love it. I love it.” Her eyes glittered and her face was wreathed in a vivid smile, making it even clearer how beautiful she could be if she so often didn't look unhappy and irritable. “We'll all be working madly Wednesday morning. I'll need everyone to help.”